Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

EVENTS

Buster Wilson Loves Boycotts

Buster Wilson of the American Family Association writes a stirring defense of boycotting companies that think gay people are human beings with equal rights. It’s important for Christians to boycott pro-equality corporations because that brings them in line with God’s will, he says:

If I am a believer in the Biblical definition and symbolism of traditional/natural marriage, then I don’t want any of my money to help pay for the promotion and legalization of same sex marriage! IF a company is using their profits from retail sales to promote an unGodly ideal, then it is a great benefit to me to know about it! Why? So I can give my financial resources to someone else who won’t use my dollars to promote and support unGodly causes!

I would rather encourage Christians to use their economic power to help someone more congruent with their beliefs. Dr. Moore apparently sees no harm in continuing to give our support to those who WILL use that profit from the business generated by the Christian community to promote and support evil. He choses rather, he says, to sit with a lost man and share the Gospel over a frothy Venti latte! With no apparent care that the combined profits from purchases like his sweet drink, will be used to make the immoral redefinition of marriage a reality! Whatever happened to being a faithful steward of our resources? Will God be ok with us willfully making a purchase, or purchases from a business that we KNOW will use that same money we are stewards over to help create an “in your face” action against God?

I think Wilson is absolutely right. He should boycott every single company that has pro-equality policies, like all of the companies that get high scores from the Human Rights Campaign. Which means he’s pretty much going to become a hermit living off the land and never going anywhere. He can’t fly on any airline; not only do most of them get high scores for equality, they also all use either Boeing or Airbus planes, both of which also get perfect scores. They also can’t drive anywhere. Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, Toyota, Subaru and Volkswagon all scored a perfect 100 and Volvo is a Swedish company and you know how evil those Swedes are. They can’t even take Greyhound or Amtrak. It may be horse and buggy time, but at least their mode of transportation will match their 18th century beliefs.

Good luck finding a bank or a good hetero-normative mortgage. Bank of America, Citigroup, Countrywide, JP Morgan Chase, Fannie Mae, Washington Mutual and Wells Fargo all scored 100. Credit cards are completely out, because American Express, Mastercard and Visa all got perfect scores. Can’t do Discover either, since they’re owned by Morgan Stanley and they got a 100 as well. Bank of America, Bear Stearns, Capital One Financial, Charles Schwab, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and Wachovia all got perfect scores on the Sodomy Scale.

They can’t get health insurance from AAA, Hartford, Metlife, Prudential, ING and Nationwide. And even if they had health insurance, they can’t take any medications made by Eli Lilly, Bristol Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson and Johnson, Merck or Pfizer.

They’re gonna have to grow their own food, too. Kraft and General Mills both get perfect scores, which eliminates about half the products in a grocery store. Campbell Soups got a 95. They may be relying on manna from heaven. They can’t even use a computer. Microsoft and Apple both support equal rights. And the basic email program used all over the internet, sendmail, was created by a gay man.

But Ed, surely you wouldn’t want him to find out the policies of companies: That’s RESEARCH!!! Almost as bad a SCIENCE!!!
No he’ll only boycott small companies that come to his attention by accident.
As usual.

When THEY do boycotts, it’s like terrorism.
When WE do them, that’s expressing the will of God against you unGodly atheist Muslims.
Remember how we brought Disney to its knees over their parks’ gay days?!? And the economic damage we wrought on J.C. Penney with our million moms?

I wonder if someone should send him the list — and then keep an eye out for the inevitable hypocrisy.

Of course, it’s discrimination to refuse to do business with someone on the basis of their beliefs — neo-Nazis and Communists both shop at Home Depot. But just once, I’d like for there to be a day when a company could say “no soup for you,” and then the next company, and the one after that.

All of these people would be huddled together at Chick-fil-A. But I think they wouldn’t be able to have a diet Coke.

ashleybell @ #8, I was thinking the same thing. What would happen to the Tea Party and Christian Conservatives if the weapon manufacturers liked gay people? If they are pro-gay, I’m buying stock in every slingshot company.

I’m pretty sure that Apple and Microsoft are both okay with gay rights, and I’m betting that the Linux movement is too, so if they really take that boycott seriously then they will all stop using computers and get the fuck off of the internet. This could be one of the best right wing fundy initiatives ever. To paraphrase John Lennon, “Imagne there’s no Christians (on the internet), fuckin’ awesome if it’s true…”

Fundamentalists, if you are reading this, please follow the boycott. Stop using the computers that operate on systems made by gay friendly people. Get off of the internet. Crawl back into your caves. We will bemoan the loss of humour with the passing of your daily doses of cognitive dissonance and hypocrisy, but we will survive, and thrive.

@5 and some following: the hypocrisy reminds me of when Andrew Breitbart died. There was much pearl clutching on his and similar websites about the mean things those nasty liberals said about him. How could we not consider his family’s feelings? When I pointed out the truly vile things Breitbart had said about Ted Kennedy within hours of his death, which presumably Kennedy’s family might have seen, one guy literally wrote back, “That’s different, he deserved it.”

If anyone made decisions based on the totality of scripture, they’d go stark raving mad. The first two books of Genesis contradict each other, and it just gets worse from there. EVERYBODY picks and chooses.

jnorris @ 14:

Maybe there’s some nice homophobic coppersmith who makes bronze weapons and armor. Bronze age tech for Bronze Age ideas. No, wait, then they’d complain we were oppressing them with our iron chariots, and they’d lobby Congress for a law outlawing any vehicle that isn’t a union between one wheeled platform and one or more draft animals. Never mind.

@ tbp1,
For shits and giggles, I’d suggest reading Hunter S. Thompson’s “eulogy” of Nixon, if you have not already done so.
Mencken also dragged William Jennings Bryan over the coals masterfully:
“His speech had been maundering feeble and often downright idiotic. Presumably, he was speaking to a point of law, but it was quickly apparent that he knew no more law than the bailiff at the door. So he launched into mere violet garrulity. He dragged in snatches of ancient chautauqua addresses; he wandered up hill and down dale. Finally, Darrow lured him into that fabulous imbecility about man as a mammal. He sat down one of the most tragic asses in American history.”